Sky Gnome

A Sky GnomeThe newly launched Sky Gnome is a rounded pyramid that looks like a clock radio and enables one to listen to any channel on Sky remotely.

According to the FAQ (which I can’t link to because it’s embedded in a stupid flash movie) it can transmit up to 30 meters if you want to be able to use a remote control to change the channels and up to 100m in total without the sound degrading.

It contains a battery that runs for about 8 hours that gets charged from the supplied docking station which is where I guess the transmitter sits.

I think it’s a fantastic idea: In the Beale household Radio is on in the Kitchen most of the time and I’ve been looking at ways that I could get to listen to footie upstairs in my office when I’m working or in the garden without having to rely on 5 Live on medium wave. With this little thing I’ll be able to listen to Match of the Day, Sky Sports and 5 Live in digital quality without having to shell out on a second DAB radio.

At the time of writing they are £69.99 and I want one.

Related links:

Creating a Subversion repository

This item assumes that you already have svn installed and this is the first time you’ve created a repository for this server (else leave out certain bits)

All items here worked for me on my local development server where I’d already installed subversion but up to now had only been using it as a client to check out code from remote repositories.

Create the repository

[code]svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /export/svn/ZF_blog[/code]

edit /export/svn/ZF_blog/conf/svnserve.conf

making sure
[general] is un-commented
passwd-db=/etc/subversion/passwd
realm=SomeString

Sort out authentication

[code]useradd -d /export/svn -s /bin/false -m svn
groupadd svn
cd /export/svn
chown -R svn:svn ZF_blog
find ZF_blog -type d -exec chmod 2770 {} ;
echo "[users]
bealers=password" >> /etc/subversion/passwd[/code]

cd to the folder where your code lies (in the correct structure):

[code]/ZF_blog/branches
/ZF_blog/tags
/ZF_blog/trunk
/ZF_blog/trunk/[/code]

Import

[code]cd ~bealers/tmp/ZF_blog
svn import . file:///export/svn/ZF_blog/
[/code]

Edit the commit notes document, for me it opens up in vi. write/quit and your files should be imported

Checkout

[code]svn co svn://localhost/ZF_blog/trunk/ zf.blog
svn: Can't connect to host 'localhost': Connection refused[/code]

Ah, this server does not have the svn server running, or inetd to run it on so as an aside:

[code]apt-get install inetd
echo "svn stream tcp nowait svn /usr/bin/svnserve svnserve -i -r /export/svn/" >> /etc/inetd.conf
/etc/init.d/inetd start[/code]

Checkout (again)

[code]svn co svn://localhost/ZF_blog/trunk/ zf.blog
A zf.blog/sql
A zf.blog/sql/zf.blog.sql
A zf.blog/codebase
A zf.blog/codebase/app
A zf.blog/codebase/app/models
A zf.blog/codebase/app/models/db
A zf.blog/codebase/app/models/db/Posts.php
A zf.blog/codebase/app/controllers
A zf.blog/codebase/app/controllers/IndexController.php
A zf.blog/codebase/app/controllers/AdminController.php
A zf.blog/codebase/app/views
A zf.blog/codebase/app/views/postForm.php
A zf.blog/codebase/app/views/~list.php
A zf.blog/codebase/app/views/list.php
A zf.blog/codebase/app/views/template.php
A zf.blog/codebase/htdocs
A zf.blog/codebase/htdocs/index.php
A zf.blog/codebase/lib
A zf.blog/codebase/lib/BealersApplicationController.php
A zf.blog/codebase/etc
A zf.blog/codebase/etc/init.inc
Checked out revision 1.[/code]

All I need do now is edit a line in the app to add the codebase folder to the application path and do the same again within Apache’s httpd.conf for the VirtualHost for this app.

Related:
http://subversion.tigris.org/

An ambitious yuppie finally decided to take a vacation…

An ambitious yuppie finally decided to take a vacation.

He booked himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeded to have the time of his life.
Until the boat sank.

The man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, . . . nothing.
Only bananas and coconuts.

After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to him. In disbelief, he asks her, ” Where did you come from? How did you get here?”
She replied, ” I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”
“Amazing, ” he says. “You were really lucky to have a row boat wash up with you.”
“Oh, this?” replies the woman. “I made the row boat out of raw material I found on the island; the oars were whittled from gum tree branches; I wove the bottom from palm branches; and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.”
“But-but, that’s impossible,” stutters the man. “You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?”
“Oh, that was no problem,” replies the woman. “On the south side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware.”
The guy is stunned.
“Let’s row over to my place, ” she says.

After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As the man looks onto shore, he nearly falls out of the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man can only stare ahead, dumb struck.
As they walk into the house, she says casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down please; would you like to have a drink?”

“No, no thank you,” he says, still dazed. “Can’t take any more coconut juice.”
“It’s not coconut juice,” the woman replies, “I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?”
Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk.
After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the bathroom cabinet.”
No longer questioning anything, the man goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, is a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism.
“This woman is amazing,” he muses. “What next?”

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines-strategically positioned-and smelling faintly of gardenias.
She beckons for him to sit down next to her.
“Tell me,” she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve been out here for a really long time. You’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now,something you’ve been longing for all these months? You know…”
She stares into his eyes.
He can’t believe what he’s hearing: “You mean–?”

He swallows excitedly and tears start to form in his eyes, “I can check my e-mail from here?”

[Thanks Matt]

No more CD’s

Hooray!

This morning I finished ripping all of our CD collection into iTunes.

It’s taken months, mainly because there were huge gaps where I just couldn’t be bothered but now it’s done and it was really worth the hassle.

The stats are:

  • 35.06 GB
  • 57.9 days worth
  • 8343 tracks
  • 655 Albums (this includes EP’s and singles)
  • 329 artists

Next thing is to do a DVD back-up

Billy no mates

I was at the Orient vs. Yeovil game on Tuesday night. There wasn’t much of a crowd which is ironic seeing as it was the best game I’ve seen them play all season.

Anyway, at one point I noticed a whole bank of seats in the south stand with just one guy sat in them, the furthest possible he could be away from a) the action and b) anyone else.

We found it amusing enough for Karl to grab a shot with the camera on his phone:
Billy no mates in the South Stand

Up the O’s!

Piano music from the 2nd episode of 2nd series of Battlestar Galactica

I’m hooked on the Battlestar Galactica remake. To date I’ve seen everything up to the 2nd Episode of the 2nd series, apparently this episode is called the Valley of Darkness; not to be confused with the Valley of the Shadows by Origin Unknown, that’s slightly different.

Anyway, in this episode Starbuck happens to drop by her apartment in Cylon occupied Caprica after jumping lightyears across space in a butchered (by her in a previous episode) Cylon raider, good eh! When at her appartment she puts on her Stereo and listens to some really wonderful music that I had to own.

When the episode finished I managed to find it after only three Googles. This post links to a post that links to a post that contains a link to an MP3 of it. Apparently it’s Metamorphosis One by Philip Glass from the Obras Maestras CD (1), my next job is to get t the rest of the CD.

[EDIT]
I’ve just found out that Mr Glass also composed the music for Koyaanisqatsi. I recall being forced to watch it by a stand-in media studies teacher one wet Friday afternoon when I was about 14 (so around 1986). As much as I tried the to resist it did touch me in some way and I’m really pleased to have found it again.

[Edit 2]
It’s actually from his album Solo Piano. Aparently Obras Maestras is a compilation.

Related:
Sci-Fi channel BSG website
Koyannisquatsi Soundtrack

I am a Podcast nutter

I am finding that the ability to listen to recent BBC Radio transmissions via my iPod is having some unexpected side effects.

It all started when we got a DAB Radio for our kitchen. For both of us it’s rekindled an interest in listening to the Radio other than just the Today Programme in the morning and the funnies on the odd occasion. I now listen to Radio 5 a lot (Fighting talk and 606) plus Radio 6 and 1Xtra now and again.

I also use the Internet at work to listen to things I’ve missed. For example last night Sepp Blatter was interviewed on Five Live and as I sat down to start listening to it in the kitchen I actually stopped myself and got up to do something else as I knew that I could listen to it today when working.

The missing piece for me was being able to listen to it when on the move and as portable DAB radio is just too expensive at the moment – my killer app would be an iPod, good phone, good camera and a DAB radio – podcasting makes an excellent alternative.

On my rare tube journeys I now don’t need to make sure that I’ve a book in my case. I just listen to one of the automatically synced BBC podcasts (thanks to iTunes). But, and getting to the point, I hadn’t figured that I start laughing out loud in a packed tube! My first attempt was last week when I listened to my favourite show Fighting Talk. Every few minutes I was giggling inanely, looking around I could see that people were staring at me as if I was a nutter. It happened again this morning as I’d added Chris Evan’s show, once again I was giggling on the tube.

So there you go, I’m a podcast nutter.

Related:
BBC Podcast trial
iTunes podcast support
Fighting talk podcast
Chris Evan’s Radio 2 podcast